"All the bayonets in the Army cannot force the Negro into our homes, our schools, our churches and our places of recreation."-- Then-presidential candidate Strom Thurmond in a 1948 speech.

"The whole thing bespeaks of something much deeper and more insidious than "We just want to get married.' (Homosexuals) want to change the entire social order."-- Mychal Massie, conservative columnist and member of Project 21, a Washington-based alliance of conservative black people, in a November 2003 Associated Press article.

The rhetoric used by those who oppose gay marriage sounds an awful lot like the rhetoric used when America was caught up in the debate over another important civil rights question: Do black people deserve the right to live, work and play in the same places as white people?

To a generation which can barely fathom life before the Internet or cable television, it must sound like a tale from the Stone Age. But it was less than 50 years ago when America struggled to decide how much freedom to give a people who had been freed from slavery 100 years earlier.

The mistake many people make in the gay marriage debate is thinking that this issue is about marriage alone. That is the one thing both proponents and critics can agree on: This is about something much more.

Back in the 1960s, black Americans demanded the country give them their full freedoms under U.S. law; no hedging about separate-but-equal schools, restaurants and movie houses. It was time for America to fulfill a promise it had made a century earlier.

I wrote: “As the country prepares to celebrate the birthday of one of the country's greatest civil rights leaders Monday, the question resurfaces: Is the fight to expand gay rights comparable to the civil rights struggle for black people that remains Martin Luther King's greatest legacy?

If so, will those opposing gay marriage laws, gay adoption rights and openly gay military service wind up on the same side of history as segregationists and alarmists who once opposed so-called "race-mixing"?

And if not, why not?”

Nine years later, I think the answer to that question is plain. The only question left, if whether our Supreme Court is honest enough with itself – and aware enough of our nation’s history – to finally admit it.

About the blog

The Feed is your source for television news, reviews and commentary. A group of Tampa Bay Times writers will blog about everything from their current TV obsessions to the changing TV/media landscape (binge-watching galore!). Let's all geek out over our favorite shows together.

As a wee TV fanatic, Times pop music critic Sean Daly first learned to tell time via Lee Majors classic "The Six Million Dollar Man." On family trips, instead of asking "Are we there yet?" he would inquire of his parents: "How many more Six's?" Thus, the concept of an hour. Adorable, right? Not nearly as cute: An adult Sean wears a Tigers hat not to support Detroit but because Tom Selleck wore one on "Magnum, P.I." It's sad really.

Michelle Stark is a Times writer, editor, designer and unabashed TV nerd. Her millennial TV-watching habits rely on Netflix, Hulu and Amazon instead of traditional cable, but she never misses her favorite shows, which include everything from Girls, Parenthood and New Girl to high-minded dramas like Mad Men and Homeland. She never met a reality dance show competition she didn’t like.

Sharon Kennedy Wynne is a Times writer and editor part of that first generation of toddlers raised on Sesame Street. Her TV tastes are eclectic. She's still a big fan of Sesame Street, but also darker fare like American Horror Story and Scandal. As our resident reality TV fan (though she's ashamed to admit it), she has complex theories on Survivor, Amazing Race and Big Brother strategies.